Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

TALKS

TALKS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtɔːks//ˈtɔks//ˈtɑks/

Noun

plural of talk

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of talk

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How TALKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TALKS as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 80.5% of games, misses completely in 19.5%, and leaves about 164 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,107 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe TALKS used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

4.77 Entropy (bits)
164 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 70% of evaluated openers
1.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TALKS performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#2,107 Rank among openers
Opening with TALKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,107 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
981
4 guesses
1,152
5 guesses
162
6 guesses
11
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ALST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
26%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

TALKS can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

464 answers
172 answers
168 answers
164 answers
163 answers
118 answers
104 answers
93 answers
70 answers
66 answers
54 answers
47 answers
43 answers
40 answers
37 answers
35 answers
33 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for TALKS; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

T1A1L1K5S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing TALKS

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TALKS.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TALKS:

20% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
7% chance
Suggested:
GOIER
7% chance
Suggested:
DRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

19.5%
RIONE 6.16 bits
7.2%
GOIER 5.21 bits
7.1%
DRONE 5.55 bits
6.9%
ROUET 5.37 bits
6.9%
RIONE 5.51 bits
5.0%
MORNE 4.79 bits
4.4%
MOIRE 4.46 bits
3.9%
ROUET 4.91 bits
2.9%
RIONE 4.84 bits
2.8%
SPARE 4.67 bits

Research on TALKS

Game-tree analysis and word research for TALKS, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with TALKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,247 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #705 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it TAWKS.

Rhymes with WALKS HAWKS BALKS UNBOX

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TALKS is a kind of word.

Synonyms dialogue negotiation

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TALKS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 41 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (4.5 of 5).

In a sentence

He talks all the time.
© tatoeba.org contributor sad15 (CC BY 2.0 FR)
No one talks like that.
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).